CrazyG's Big World War One

CrazyG

@Cernel
Seeking your wisdom on a game mechanic.

Contested territories and air units. It appears if the defender has only air units left, they lose the territory and all units are destroyed. Do you have any experience with this?

Cernel

@CrazyG said in CrazyG's Big World War One:

Contested territories and air units. It appears if the defender has only air units left, they lose the territory and all units are destroyed. Do you have any experience with this?

No. But I tested it now. It appears happening when the defender is defending an enemy owned territory. Moreover, it appears having nothing to do with the air units being alone.

Reproduction steps:
Start "CrazyG's Giant World War 1".
Remove all units but 1 Infantry in "France 19".
Add 3 "Recon-Plane" in "France 19".
Change the ownership of "France 19" to "Austria-Hungary".
Attack with all from "Germany 25".
Take only air units as casualties with France (the battle should end contested with 1 Infantry and 1 or 2 Recon-Planes left, for the defender).
Skip/end Germany's turn.

Behaviour:
At the end of "Non Combat Move", the surviving France's "Recon-Planes" are removed, for being unable to land.

The limited combat round (as well as a bunch of other stuff) is the half-backed aftermath of several aborted attempts at making the WW1 version of a well known boardgame brand.

However, without politics involved and with only two fixed alliances, fully at war with each other, I don't believe that, beside editing, you can ever be in that situation, as someone's aeroplanes in an enemy owned territory could go there only during one's turn, and would have already crashed during it.

However, this might be a bug or unintended behaviour, relevant for games with politics or with not fully polarized relationships, in which some player, you are allied with, may liberate a territory, your air is in, in favour of another player you are at war with.

Is the situation you are experiencing something like what I described and, if so, how did you actually get in that condition (of having air in an enemy owned territory outside your turn)?

p.s.: If you want to go humorous and simple, I suppose you can call it simply "Giant War".

redrum

@Cernel I think that is a slightly different but related use case. In @CrazyG example, the issue is really that there shouldn't be a changing of territory owner if there is a contested territory with units from 2 different teams where the current player doesn't own any of the units. So his example is that Russia attack Germany and was left with 1 Russian inf and 2 German recon planes in a contested territory owned by Germany. Then on Austria-Hungary's turn the Russian inf takes control of the territory and Germany loses its 2 planes as they can't land there now.

Your example, France couldn't ever have planes starting in a territory owned by Austria-Hungary so isn't a possible scenario.

But yes, I believe limited combat rounds work fine for land units and only 2 players (1 on each team) like Civil War. But I think air units and multiple players on each team hasn't ever been fully tested with limited combat rounds.

CrazyG

I think what is happening is that the game is checking if Russia should take any territories, and it can't tell the difference between a territory Austria retreated from and a territory contested between Russia and Germany.

Maybe there should be an option that air units can hold contested territories?

Hepps

@redrum When I am playing against myself... I am playing against a machine.

prastle

@Hepps ?s the playing against himself? (No I DID not GIVE complete sentences with proper punctuation)

Hepps

@prastle When I play against myself it is the proverbial immovable object vs the unstoppable force.

redrum

@Hepps Who said anything about playing against yourself?

redrum

Missing connection sz95 to Morocco 2.
Incorrect connection between France 6 and Belgium 6.

redrum

@CrazyG So there is a pretty big problem. Gas doesn't actually do anything. The reason is that gas is a suicide unit so fires before anything else and then is removed so doesn't provide its negative support since its already dead.

Also on a separate but related note on suicide units, you probably want to set these properties to true:

    <!-- if false, (all property default to false), then units killed by suicide units can return fire.  if true, they can not return fire -->
    <property name="Suicide and Munition Casualties Restricted" value="false" editable="true">
      <boolean/>
    </property>
    <!-- if suicide units act like normal units on defense, except that they can not die to attacks by other suicide units -->
    <property name="Defending Suicide and Munition Units Do Not Fire" value="false" editable="false">
      <boolean/>
    </property>

I believe if you set these properties to true then you'll get better behavior as:

Casualties from artillery barrage won't return fire (seems to make more sense unless you feel from a balance perspective you want them to).
Right now if you attack a stack of artillery barrages with 1 inf then they all die. I believe this property will prevent that.

CrazyG

@redrum said in CrazyG's Big World War One:

I believe if you set these properties to true then you'll get better behavior as:

Casualties from artillery barrage won't return fire (seems to make more sense unless you feel from a balance perspective you want them to).
Right now if you attack a stack of artillery barrages with 1 inf then they all die. I believe this property will prevent that.

This problem is in Age of Tribes as well. If you set suicide units to not fire when defending, they can be used as casualties.

I'm going to move the end turn phase to the start of your turn. This solves the suicide unit problem pretty cleanly.

Schulz

why no aaGun?

Hepps

@CrazyG & @redrum Imagine if your ammunition could hide instead of having to die or all be expended in a harmless attack? Oh what a wondrous idea... I wonder if anyone is considering working on it.

CrazyG

I really wish there was a way to just make a unit not selectable as a casualty, without making it infrastructure (so it gets captured). This just comes up super often; TWW has player enforced rules about it.

redrum

@CrazyG Well I think you could use triggers like TWW has for air transports to make them non-infra during the player's turn (attack) then infra during all other turns (defense).

CrazyG

@redrum
Right, but on the attackers turn you still would have the option to select the air transport as a casualty.

redrum

@CrazyG Yeah, I think for TWW air transports they really should just be "isInfra" all the time but I think there is some reason that they then don't work right for transporting units or something. As you really want them to never have HP (always be destroyed or captured and they would never attack alone).

Missle/munition/etc are a bit different since you want them to have HP when attacking so they can attack by themselves but infra that are capturable or destroyable on defense.

My thought is really we need say an 'isMunition' or 'isInfraForDefense' property that makes units act like non-infra during their turn for attacks but act like infra during other players' turns for defense.

Hepps

@redrum The reason the Air Transports are combat units is that we could not find a way to allow Paratroopers to exclusively receive a bonus while para-dropping into battle without using the Air Transport as a way of "force feeding" the bonus using the Air Transport itself.

Hepps

@CrazyG Missing connection between Turkey 01 <---> SZ 191

redrum

@Hepps Ok. I would think you could still make the air transports "isInfra" and have it provide support to paratroopers. Did you try that and it didn't work? I think the one other issue is I'm not sure that AA guns would get to shoot at air transports if we made them "isInfra".